FEATURE W Angel Flight East Helping Lift the Financial Burden of Travel for Medical Care BY ELLEN WILLIAMS Executive Director of Angel Flight East 26 Lehigh County Health & Medicine | SUMMER 2018 hen an individual needs crucial medical care far from home, the last thing the family should be concerned with is whether or not their loved one will be able to get where they need to go. Expenses associated with travel, however, on top of considerable medical fees can be a tremendous obstacle. Getting the proper medical treatment is an urgent matter, but when a patient or their family can't afford the cost of transportation they're left with few options. That's when compassion flight organizations like Angel Flight East (AFE) step in to lift this financial burden and provide a means of travel for the patient in need. Based in the greater Philadelphia area, Angel Flight East is a non-profit organization dedicated to serving the community by facilitating free air transportation to children and adults in need of medical treatment far from home. Every year, Angel Flight East provides hundreds of flights for patients who are ambulatory and sufficiently stable to fly. It's through this process we are able to provide "hope in flight" and give families a sense of relief during an already stressful time. One such instance occurred where a child from South Carolina had a medical condition that could have resulted in the loss of his eye. Suffering from retinoblastoma, two-month-old Brayden needed crucial treatment from a facility in Philadelphia that specializes in dealing with this condition. His care plan required him to travel every three weeks to receive this treatment, a process that drove his family to think about Brayden's mother relocating to Philadelphia while the father would stay in South Carolina to continue working. Aside from being separated during this treatment, Brayden's family would have had to pay twice as much money